


Westeros

by Diglossia



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-15
Updated: 2012-03-15
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diglossia/pseuds/Diglossia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has a coping method. Sometimes it's a puzzle, an unanswered question or a philosophical riddle; sometimes it's stories made up in one's own heads.</p><p>The Scott children have Westeros. It’s always there, in their imaginings, in their daydreams, in their nightmares. The game has a magnetism to it, a sort of sick darkness that pulls at one to play.</p><p>But now people are dying, one after the other, and some of the players are starting to wonder just what, exactly, that magnetism is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Made for the ASOIAF Big Bang. Art by the lovely cabepfir.

   
The Miss Oxford Undergraduate Beauty Contest is an annual scholarship contest held at Oxford University in England. Originally, it was designed to provide scholarship opportunities to beautiful, yet underprivileged students. Instead, it became a contest to see who among all the students was the most desirable, whether underprivileged or not.

 

In recent years, the competition has been accused of fraud, vote tampering and practices that would be illegal in professional beauty contests.

 

In 1998, Lyanna Scott won the Miss Oxford Contest. This was notable because that year, the contest runner’s daughter-in-law entered the competition as well. Everyone expected her to win, though Lyanna was the fan favourite. Instead, Lyanna won and Ray, the contest runner’s son, placed the crown on her head. In that moment, no one could deny that she was the most beautiful woman there.

 

She used the scholarship money to pay for her last two years of design school. Her graduate project was a game board she hoped to give her daughter someday.

 

It was not to be. At her graduation ceremony, the cough Lyanna had been ignoring all spring became suddenly worse. Blood speckled her hands when she tried to cover her cough.

 

The doctors said it was pneumonia. It could be cured with enough rest and medicine.

 

Lyanna died within the year.

 

ØØØ

 

It was supposed to be a gift for Sansa when she got older, a game of knights and ladies. Robb had been six and greedy in a way he would never be in later years. He felt entitled to everything. There was no way he could know this was one gift that couldn’t be rewrapped.

 

A rectangular board with a map of a mystical otherworld drawn on it. Little carved play pieces and pretty pictures along the border. Theon told Robb to put it back. He didn’t want to play a girly, piece of rubbish game. Jon told Robb to play with it.

 

They bastardized the game that summer, each of them creating their own terrible visions of blood and guts in the way only little kids could. Theon took claim to the sea and the coastlines, telling horror stories of killing man-eating sharks and sea monsters, and krakens. Jon took the far north, clothed himself all in black (he was always an odd one) and talked of zombies and wild people, and sorcerers. Robb, never the imaginative one, closed his eyes and picked the first spot his finger landed on. He said it was rather like their home except colder and with more horses. Theon promptly called him stupid.

 

That left the whole rest of the game board. One was supposed to take only a single place in the beginning, then one could conquer the rest or simply let them be. Robb wouldn’t let them cheat.

 

Besides, Mrs Cat was furious when she found out and made them include Sansa. Theon never was sure whether Cat was madder at them taking Sansa’s game or Robb thinking to include Jon before his sister. Cat really didn’t like Jon. Theon didn’t either.

 

Sansa, all of four, had little interest in the game. But she had as little control over the situation as they did, so she played. She didn’t want to play with them, she declared. Their games were too rude and boyish. Robb told Sansa she could have all the rest, see? There were many different Houses; she could have any which one she wanted.

 

Soon after, Arya and Bran wanted to play, though both were too young to understand the rules. Robb let them play anyhow.

 

Then summer was over and school had begun. The game was packed away for the next year.

 

ØØØ

 

Theon’s grades in school had never been noteworthy, as Robb’s had been. The eldest Scott child had papers lovingly affixed to every appropriate surface possible. At times, it seemed Robb was the only child in the house anyone had any pride in. There were other reasons for Theon’s to be kept away, ones that weren’t like Arya’s, whose reading was abysmal.

 

They were rather equal to Jon’s in fact, which only made Catelyn’s reactions all the odder. Once a month, Theon’s case worker would come and Cat would show her about the house, pointing out this or that paper, this or that picture that had magically appeared that morning. At least she kept them, Theon conceded.

 

Looking around the Scott residence, it was not apparent seven children lived there. Over the mantelpiece were the ever present pictures of Catelyn and Ned’s children, Robb, Sansa, Arya, Bran and baby Rickon. Theon was shoved in there on visitation days, like some forgotten delinquent who only showed up on holidays and only then to ruin them. He hadn’t the worst of it. Jon…Theon might hate Jon but he never understood Cat’s abhorrence of her husband’s eldest son.

 

Perhaps it was her upbringing. Cat had been born in Nitra, Slovakia, the eldest daughter of an MD rumoured to also be a crime boss. She was fiercely loyal to her family and cold to anyone and everyone else.

 

Perhaps it was a sign of the only problem in her marriage. Cat and Mr Scott had a strange courtship. Cat had been university sweethearts with Mr Scott’s elder brother, a professional soldier who had died in a training manoeuvre a few months before their wedding. Mr Scott had married Cat either to keep her from being deported or as part of the conditions of an arranged marriage, no one knew for sure. For a few months, they were happy.

 

Then Ned’s ex-girlfriend showed up with a bundle of bambino and Cat’s world shattered. She was nine months pregnant.

 

Cat, perhaps because she didn’t truly understand British inheritance law, had Ned draw up a will that explicitly stated that Jon, the half-brother to her own children, would never inherit anything of Ned’s. Since the money had all come from Cat in the first place, Theon didn’t understand how she went to such strange measures.

 

Good old Cat. She was fair to him. She hadn’t wanted to foster Theon any more than she wanted Jon but she had never been unkind to him. Theon hoped she would one day agree to adopt him.

 

The foster care system always prefers to place a child with relatives. Theon was not allowed contact with his family but he was pretty sure they were all still alive when he was a child. They were just too irresponsible to have him back.

 

He had heard his dad had gone Muslim in gaol, something about ultra-conservative fundamentalism. Strange that, since he had been so secular when Theon was growing up with him.

 

His mum was dead or hiding somewhere. His uncle was taking care of his brothers and sister.

 

The case worker said he was better off with Mr Scott: “He’s a good man, if a bit strict. You can’t ask for a better role model.” She meant he didn’t drink or touch his children like the other fathers. She meant he didn’t leave them wandering in the park until some lady walking her dog told the police there was a little boy and he was lost, had been lost for hours.

 

It would be harder for the younger ones, his uncle had told him, to be in foster care.

 

“Cheer up, Theon, I’ll have ye back in a year.” Three years passed and Theon was still with the Scotts. His uncle stopped coming to the visitations. His father never came in the first place.

 

“Oww!” Theon complained as a stick came crashing over his head. Childish laughter came from the bushes where Robb and Jon were hiding, poorly.

 

“Let’s be knights!” Jon announced excitedly. He’d been a happy child then, too young to understand Cat’s hatred.

 

 

“Yeah,” Robb joined in. “We already got you a stick, Theon!” He giggled pointing at the leafy, filthy branch on the ground.

 

Seven years old and constant companions, Robb and Jon didn’t quite grasp the concept of “half-brothers”. It didn’t help that Jon had never kenned his mum. No one knew who she was or where she was.

 

Sansa scowled at them.

 

“You have to be Catholic to be a knight,” Sansa said.

 

So they became warriors, instead.

 

ØØØ

 

When Robb was nine and Theon was thirteen, Catelyn decided that the Scott household could use a pet. She had been too busy taking care of her children before, she said, but now she thought it would do Robb good to learn some responsibility. Sansa had been quiet about it, polite as ever, but it soon became apparent that she wanted a pet, too. Then, Arya, a mere _child_ and not the sort of thing anyone should listen to, demanded one of her own, so it was off to the pet store.

 

Only, Bran had begun crying at the thought of puppy mills and breeding farms (which Theon might have been responsible for putting in his head- Theon was not daft enough to think three pets would be adequately taken care of by those three), and Robb began to reconsider. No one at that point had considered getting Bran a pet (he was five), yet Robb still felt the need to talk to Bran quietly and beg him not to cry.

 

Bran sniffled and said they should go to the animal shelter instead. Theon tried not to beat his head into the windshield. Jon, of course, felt the need to butt in and agree. The animal shelter was an excellent idea.

 

So they went all the way out to Glasgow to the Dogs Trust and Theon hated his existence. Because he knew Mr Scott and Mr Scott was not going to rest until each and every one of his children acquired a shelter animal. Theon did not want an animal.

 

Those animals had been abandoned for a reason. Either they were so broken that their owners could not care for them- or their owners had broken them so badly that they could not be used for anything else. They were ruined. They could not be fixed.

 

Arya was the first to pick one out. They had agreed to dogs, since a medley of cats and dogs was likely to end in squabbles and bickering. She was walking among the cages, dismissing the small lapdogs and toys. Theon was expecting her to pick one of the hunting or sport dogs Bran was mooning over. Instead, she found a fat little orange and white Corgi and declared it hers.

 

Bran was next with a grey mutt of indiscriminate background. It was big and wiry. He named it Summer, since it was the word least likely to be connected to that thing.  
Sansa was cooing over a steel grey whippet with big eyes and prominent ribs. He would never have expected the delicate girl to kneel on the dirty cement floor and yet there she was, reaching her hand out to pet the docile hound.

 

Theon was already counting the added stress of one more animal when he noticed that Robb was talking to the shelter volunteer and looking pointedly at where Jon was on his knees. The glass-fronted cage before him was crowded with not one massive Irish wolfhound, but three. Theon frowned at Mr Scott but the man seemed not to notice the issue. It was as if they were at a grocery store and picking out candies, not animals.

 

“Mr Scott-" he began when Robb spoke up.

 

“Dad, the shelter volunteer says these dogs have to be bought together.”

 

“I’m afraid,” the volunteer interrupted, “that these three are from the same litter. They were raised in the same household and unfortunately abused there. We would prefer that they be adopted together.” Theon almost laughed there. Adopted? They were buying the animals, not adopting them! They weren’t people. Besides, that white one with the red eyes was freaky.

 

They ‘adopted’ all three of them. Damn Mr Scott and his bleeding heart.

 

Jon picked the freaky albino, naturally.

 

“Don’t you want one?” little Bran asked, pointing at the dog he had named Summer.

 

The Scotts had always been a rich lot. None of them had ever gone wanting or kenned the hard decision between food and bills, toys and clothes. Of course, one of them would think to ask him if he wanted a pet.

 

“I haven’t got a quid on me.”

 

“It’s okay. Dad will pay.”

 

Completely different worldviews, these Scotts.

 

Theon let the little boy wander off with his new pet, content to watch the spectacle that was Jon ultimately getting bit by the monster he’d picked out. Checking its teeth, he was, like a complete nutter.

 

“You didn’t want one?” Robb asked, walking over to him. He had the black monster on a leash. It was an enormous thing, higher than Robb’s hip, looking more like a shaggy pony than anything else.

 

Theon raised an eyebrow, his smirk firmly in place. Bran he could understand but Robb? He thought Robb would understand.

 

“We can share,” Robb announced. Theon looked down at the black, slobbering bulldog, then back at Robb, who smiled. “I was going to call him Wind, but now I think Grey Wind would be a better name.”

 

Theon’s throat felt suddenly tight.

 

“Thank you,” he said.


	2. Chapter 2

Westeros was a beauty when Lyanna first created it, a board of cherry wood lined with sterling silver, the edges left bare so you could admire the wood underneath. A map of the fantasy world was drawn on paper that had been affixed to the board’s surface, each country carefully delineated; the seats of power, keeps, castles and halls, marked with a dot and a name. Outside the map were yellow squares with writing or crests on them.

 

The object of the game was to capture as many Kingdoms as possible before the game ended. Every player got a roll on his or her turn, which indicated how many squares that player could move his or her main piece. If one landed on a piece with the crest of another Kingdom, one could choose to put a flag there. Once there were three flags, the player could attack, which meant rolling the special attack dice and awarding the Kingdom to the player with the higher dice roll, plus however many flags each player had on the Kingdom. The player who had control of that Kingdom had the option of attacking the invader at any time. However, the home player had to have a flag on the Kingdom to expel the invader. The flags represented each Kingdom’s army.

 

If one got all the Kingdoms, one automatically won and the game ended. It usually dissolved before then with one or more of the players becoming insufferably bored and convincing the others to stop playing.

 

Each player got to choose which Kingdom he or she started in, each Kingdom having different strengths and weaknesses. Theon’s favourite, the Iron Islands, required five of a player’s available ten flags to launch an attack. In Robb’s favourite, the North, one flag would be removed every time the invader passed the starting point, ostensibly because the cold weather froze the army to death. Jon had the ability as the Wall to take a flag from any Kingdom he landed on, rendering that flag unusable for the rest of the game. Sansa always liked the Westerlands, but she had special rules because she was a lady and ‘marrying’ meant she could form an alliance with another Kingdom that could not be absolved for the duration of the game. Jon would never form an alliance with her, and Sansa did not particularly like Theon, so Robb would take pity on her and marry their pieces. Knights, the default for male players, could not marry one another. Ladies could not launch attacks. It was a surprisingly narrow-minded game.

 

There were, in truth, two ways to play the game, though the boys almost always played the first. In the second version, all the Kingdoms were joined as a single country, and the object was to stage resistance movements against the king. You had to have at least seven players to play that way, though.

 

The really fun part about the game was that one could put a picture on one’s piece to personalize it, so everyone knew whose piece was whose. Theon had found a picture of a squid and taped it to his piece because, come on, _squid_. Squids were awesome.

 

Jon, the dork, drew a picture of himself instead.

 

“Roll,” Theon groaned, putting his head in his hands. Jon was staring off into space _again_. Idiot. He’d picked the one neutral Kingdom where nothing ever happened so Theon and everyone else had to wait agonizingly long for him to roll before they could get on with their far more interesting games. “Would you please _roll_?”

 

“Give him a moment,” Robb said, though he gave Jon a warning glance.

 

Jon was always so slow and careful with everything he did, like anyone cared what he did. He thought too much and did too little. It was frustrating to Theon, who was exactly the opposite.

 

When Theon got bored during play, he would flip through the playbook and not just for the pretty pictures Aunt Lyanna had drawn. The woman had been shockingly talented, her art looking like something out of a nice comic book. Like a comic book, it also highlighted the female figure, something fourteen-year-old Theon could appreciate immensely. Theon, though he didn’t read a lot, actually had read the full playbook a couple of times, Jon and Arya’s opinions otherwise.

 

There was a lot of fun information in the book- and a lot that wasn’t fun at all. Theon discovered the islands he’d picked out weren’t as awesome as he’d thought they would be. They were barren rock and sand, and full of some of the harshest people in Westeros. Primitive, violent, not prone to accessories but easy enough to sway with gold and silver. They didn’t let anyone control them without a fight and they took pride in being able to live in some of the worst places imaginable. They were so much better than a drunkard father and an absent family.

 

He styled himself Theon, Kraken Master of the Seas. He was a great warrior who drank seawater and ate salted fish. He spent every single day sailing his longboat with only his shield and his dirk to protect him from the wilds of the sea.

 

ØØØ

 

Jon was a pain, but he was a hundred times better than the other alternatives, namely one Joffrey Lancaster.

 

His parents, Mr and Mrs Lancaster, were the creepiest couple Theon had ever laid eyes on. It wasn’t their looks- separately they weren’t creepy at all. It was how much they looked alike. Blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin and all of a matching shade. They could have been twins.

 

Mr Lancaster, a handsome and well-sought after man by the name of Jaime, was a Lieutenant General of the 11th Brigade. He was a ground fighter in Afghanistan and had actually fought with the royal family on several occasions. His father before him had been a member of the SRR and still was, it was rumoured. Needless to say, Cersei Lancaster was a beautiful woman. She was highly intelligent; a political scientist who had written several highly accredited books on feminism and gender equality. She currently worked for the Lord Chancellor as his secretary.

 

The real reason the Scotts were so familiar with the Lancasters was that Jaime’s father was in the House of Lords along with Mr Scott and Cersei’s boss. Tywin Lancaster was an old yet still vigorous man, certainly capable of giving any of the other Lords a run for their money. His influence was widespread, his wealth legendary and his war decorations fearsome in a country that had been largely peaceful for years. He’d fought in the Falkland Islands, protected Brunei, and had only stepped back from Afghanistan to give his son a chance at glory. Besides, he said, it wouldn’t do for a man of his age to die on the battlefield. It would be embarrassing.

 

The real embarrassment was Robert Burton, Mr Scott’s oldest friend and the man Robb was named after. Theon looked upon the Lord Chancellor with disgust. He was a fat man, ill-kempt, a drunkard and a terrible womanizer. The womanizing part was not such a problem for Theon since it really said more about the women than Robert’s personal clout. How would anyone abase themselves for a man who would never give them anything? Theon wasn’t above grovelling and flattering for what he wanted but the benefits had to outweigh the risks.

 

Supposedly, Mr Scott and Mr Burton had served together. The idea of Mr Burton on a battlefield gave Theon endless amusement. He couldn’t have been in a tank, could he? His fat gut would get stuck going in. They’d have to wheel him into battle with half his body sticking out the top.

 

Robb, of course, would hear none of it. He saved all his disgust for the secretary’s children, especially her elder and favourite son, Joffrey.

 

Their children were the most stuck-up, obnoxious brats Theon had ever had the pleasure of meeting. The two younger were kenned by appearance only but he surely kenned Joffrey’s name. Sansa was enamoured with the boy, talking endlessly about him while she watched them play Westeros. It was the only time Theon spent any time with her, since she favoured more ‘feminine’ activities such as painting and poetry. Games of violence and playbooks filled with gory battle details didn’t interest her much.

 

Theon found it hilarious then that she looked up to Joffrey’s mother so much. Cersei was a strong woman, egalitarian in regards to gender and unwilling to bow down to anyone. Sansa was as weak-willed as they came. The only person she ever fought with was Arya.

 

“Why do we have to place this stupid game?” Joffrey complained, leaning back in his chair. “Oi, foster boy, don’t you have anything better to do in this shitheap?”

 

Theon ground his teeth and said nothing. He _was_ a foster child and Joffrey’s family had more power than his biological one ever would.

 

Beside him, Robb bristled.

 

“If you don’t like it, Lancaster, I suggest you find a way to amuse yourself.”

 

“I’m a guest,” Joffrey drawled, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I shouldn’t _have_ to amuse myself. My mother would have found something more interesting for us to do. But, then, she’s a cultured woman, not like yours.”

 

It was the last straw in a long litany of insults. Robb swore and launched himself at Joffrey, slinging the game board onto the floor as his body crossed the table. The pieces scattered everywhere as the two screamed insults and traded punches. Theon stayed where he was, amused. He didn’t much like Cat but he wasn’t about to defend Joffrey’s mother.

 

Theon didn’t like Cersei. Old-fashioned and more than a bit misogynistic, he just didn’t see women as having much use in the world of sports or politics. What had Cersei ever done? She’d written a few books that, while wealthy in critical reviews, went dusty on store bookshelves. She was still working behind a parliamentary secretary’s desk, using her father’s name to keep even that job.

 

Cat washed his mouth out with soap the first time he expressed those views. Theon amended his beliefs to the idea that while most women were weak-willed and unintelligent, there were a few that could more than outpace him.

 

ØØØ

 

Parliament met infrequently enough that Mr Scott had his own business. He was a landlord, renting out lodges and summer cottages all across Scotland. Theon knew because Mr Scott had Robb, Jon and him trekking all over the countryside every weekend to check up on his tenants and their myriad complaints. He knew them all by name, which Jon found a waste of time. He would kick his heels and whine, asking how _he_ had to come along if he was never going to do any of this? And how couldn’t he bring his creepy albino dog with him?

 

Because it fucking creeped out all the tenants, Theon told him when Mr Scott was not paying attention. It wasn’t favouritism: Robb’s pet couldn’t come along, either. Most of the time. Okay, some of the time. Theon might have considered the implications of that unfairness but he really couldn’t be bothered to care about Jon’s never-ending list of problems.

 

Jon had decided he was going into the military when he got older, just like Uncle Ben. Uncle Ben was Jon’s hero. Theon didn’t think too highly of him. Uncle Ben would show up out of nowhere for a couple days, reeking of sand and sweat, eat up the best food in the house and then leave with his arms loaded with gifts. He was grim and concerned way too much about what was happening in corners of the world everyone had since given up on. Jon was the only one who listened to his stories with anything more than vague politeness. But then, Jon was a strange, miserable kid. And stupid. Theon shouldn’t forget that. Jon was a dumbass.

 

 _Theon’s_ hero was far cooler. Mr Scott wasn’t the kindest man but he could skin a freshly-killed deer, then turn around and go sit in Parliament the very next day. It was Mr Scott everyone talked about, the great Lord that everyone admired. Theon’s father had been in Parliament for a while, before he was ousted for illegal and immoral practices…and the rumours started that he wasn’t taking good care of his wife or his children. Mr Scott took care of his children. He made sure to spend time with each of them, even Sansa, who he had little in common with. He talked to them, comforted them and showed them the harshness of life in all its terrible glory. He didn’t lie to them.

 

Theon wanted a father like him. Every year, he hoped Mr Scott would ask to adopt him.

 

Ned never did.

 

ØØØ

 

Mr Scott didn’t believe in cartoons. He had nothing against using television for educational or news purposes but for amusement? They had a whole yard to play in.

 

He had never taught his children to be avid readers. Again, the issue was using it for amusement. Life couldn’t be serious enough, in Mr Scott’s opinion. Working hard was entertaining enough.

 

This time, Mr Scott played with them. It was, unsurprisingly, far less boisterous and interesting than usual.

 

Jon read from the card: “You come across the dead body of a direwolf. You pass by the body only to hear the whimpering of young pups. Roll to see how many.” Jon rolled. Six. “You ask your companions what to do.”

 

“Kill ‘im,” Theon said immediately. “Before they freeze to death.”

 

“It isn’t your turn, you bloodthirsty monster!” Jon snapped, looking, strangely enough, horrified at Theon’s suggestion. “Would you kill _our_ direwolves?”

 

“Hold on,” Theon said, pulling a face. “Wolves?”

 

“Direwolves,” Robb corrected, leaning back in his chair, bored. He was never as into these games as Theon and Jon were. Mr Scott’s face was impassive. Theon guessed he was regretting his decision to play with them. He would never let them ken, of course, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t feel it.

 

“They’re dogs! Pets! Not human beings!”

 

“So?” Jon huffed, since he was a pansy and everything had to be big and magical. “If you don’t like it, you don’t get one.”

 

_One for each of the Scott children, Jon told Ned, stopping Theon Greyjoy from massacring the helpless pups as they lay freezing in the snow._

 

“Oh, come on!”


	3. Chapter 3

Even when he had not seen the bastard in two years, there were a hundred thousand reasons Theon hated Jon Scott. His poetry, for one. Jon had a habit of writing the most god-awful poetry, then making Robb read it. Theon had to endure it purely because he spent so much time with the second-oldest Scott. Robb would lie and dissemble, telling Jon it was good but needed improvement here or there. Lies. Jon could barely spell and his grammar was atrocious, both of which he attributed to ‘artistic licence’. It always struck Theon as strange that Jon wrote since he didn’t read. Theon could count on his hands how many times he had caught Jon with a book not for school.

 

Then there was the fact that he was always complaining about his fate in life. Theon didn’t complain and _he_ had it a million times worse. So what if Cat hated Jon’s guts? A lot of people did.

 

No matter how many times Theon listed all the reasons, though, he knew the truth. He hated Jon because they were in competition. Only one of them could have the family’s favour. They were eternal rivals.

 

They had the family split down the middle or as close as they could get it. Mr Scott was Jon’s, since Jon was his true son. Cat was Theon’s for the very same reason Mr Scott was Jon’s. Sansa tolerated Theon, so she was his. Arya and Brandon loved Jon, so they were his. Rickon was a little kid and not at all sociable so he belonged to neither.

 

It wasn’t surprising, then, that they fought over Robb. He was the eldest, the one set to follow in his father’s footsteps, the Scottiest of the Scotts (Theon laughed at his own wit)…and completely oblivious to the power play. He didn’t care that Jon was his half-brother by some slag anymore than he cared that Theon was his foster brother. Robb just wanted them to get along.

 

He didn’t get it at all.

 

Theon wanted him so badly. He’d never admit it, of course, since he didn’t feel he should _need_ anyone but his desire for Robb went far beyond a need to defeat Jon. The bastard could have the rest of the family if he gave up Robb. Theon didn’t count Sansa and Cat much of a victory, just a flighty girl and an old woman whose beauty started to fade years ago.

 

ØØØ

 

 _Jon-  
Sansa’s convinced she and Joffrey Lancaster are going to be married. He proposed to her a fortnight past. There’s been fighting ever since. Mother and Sansa go at it at every hour of the day. Oftentimes, Bran is the only one to quiet them.  
  
Arya misses you terribly. She keeps asking when you’re coming back. You will be coming home for Christmas, won’t you?  
  
Bran wants you to ken he won his cross-country competition. He’s really fast. Rickon says “hallo”. He drew you a picture.  
  
-Robb_

 

Jon grinned at the crudely drawn stick figures at the bottom of the page. Two people, one twice the size of the other, held hands. The small one was waving. It was the first letter he had ever gotten, dated almost a month ago. He had been here three.

 

He read the letter again, before folding it up. If they were lucky, there would soon be a permanent internet connection at the next post. They could use it once a month, for Skype or e-mail, their preference. As long as the connection was secure, there would be no chance of letters being lost.

 

Pyp joked that Sam’s letters always got lost. Even Toad got one every few months but Sam never did, for a reason Jon could not fathom. He seemed the sort of boy with a loving mother at home desperately worried about him.

 

Jon noticed that Pyp never got letters, either. He’d realised after a time that Pyp’s jokes were mostly to cover up his own shortcomings by jabbing at others. Pyp had a lot of shortcomings.

 

The days were hard in Afghanistan. Jon had read about prisoners going insane from lack of stimulus, but he had never realized just how hard it was to spend every day watching, waiting, terrified that someone or something was going to come from the horizon and kill him and everyone nearby. He didn’t ken what was worse: the mind-numbingness or the fear.

 

Sam was afraid of everything. Jon was starting to think he had the right of it.

 

ØØØ

 

The days blurred together in the world of endless sand. Jon wished on many occasions that fighting would break out. Whether among his companion soldiers or the insurgents, it made little difference to him. The monotony was more likely to kill them than the terrorists.

 

Shooting began at half past ten, several hours into Jon and Pyp’s watch. He liked the older man, even if he was a miserable shot.

 

A bullet whizzed past Jon’s helmet, sending shock waves through the metal. Another at his feet had him doing a quick two-step to avoid losing a toe.

 

“Let’s show these cousin-fuckers,” Pyp hissed, his rifle cocked at his shoulder. He was ready to shoot, for what good that did.

 

A yelp sounded, followed by unintelligible cursing and, oddly, a deep growl. The bullets stopped coming.

 

“You want to go investigate?” Jon asked, when no more seemed forthcoming.

 

“No,” Pyp answered honestly. “D’you?”

 

They waited another five minutes before approaching the insurgent’s hiding spot. He had hidden behind the broken wall of a building twenty metres away from them, using the false safety the soldiers felt to pick them off. Pyp kicked one of the broken sun-baked bricks out of the way. The ground was littered with them.

 

Jon crossed the wall gun first. Red eyes gleamed out of the darkness.

 

“Uh, Jon,” Pyp said when Jon did the least sensible thing ever and continued to move forward towards the eyes. “Jon, it’s coming for you!”

 

The beast lunged and tackled Jon, paws pinning him to the ground. He landed in the sand and the bricks, and began laughing, much to Pyp’s confusion.

 

“Er, Jon, there’s a dog on you.”

 

“It’s Ghost!” Jon told him, more excited that Pyp had ever seen him. “My dog.”

 

“You made friends with one of the strays?” The Khyber Pass had many dogs running about without tags or owners. The locals despised them, calling them filthy animals and beating them away with brooms on occasion. It had something to do with their religion but Jon was lost on what. Some of the troops, being of a completely different mindset, regularly fed one or two of them, the friendlier and less feral ones. They were useful for warning for insurgents in the middle of the night. Sometimes.

 

“No, it’s my dog from home!”

 

Ghost had travelled across British-controlled Afghanistan to find Jon. He may or may not have been put on a supply plane headed there by Theon (who was prepared to ask how likely that was). He may or may not have broken into the ration packs and he may or may not have scared the living daylights out of the poor sods who first opened the hatch and found an albino dog with glowing red eyes waiting for them. What he had for certain done was found Jon.

 

He was hard to recognize. Ghost was filthy now, the same tan colour as everything else. Jon knew him though: those red eyes were unmistakeable. That and the tongue happily licking his sweaty face.

 

The captain was not pleased to have a new stray hanging around the camp. He got over it the first time Ghost killed an insurgent.


	4. Chapter 4

Jon’s first deployment had him home less than a year after he left. All he wanted to do was lie down in his old bed and watch all the movies that had come out while he was gone. Instead, Robb and Theon dragged him to a party.

 

Robb did not want his half-brother being all anti-social on a Friday night. Jon deserved a good time while he was on leave.

 

Besides, Jeyne was going to be at the party.

 

Jeyne wasn’t beautiful, but she made Robb’s pulse quicken and his trousers tighten. He had kenned her forever but hadn’t, until last year, noticed how much she had blossomed into a young woman over the years.

 

He refused to discuss her around Theon or Jon. Theon made horrible, lewd comments and Jon…Jon just made horrible comments. Jon could be strange sometimes.

 

Tonight, Jeyne was wearing a tight black shirt over an equally tight pair of jeans. No jewellery but, then, Robb was not all that into fancy birds. They reminded him too much of his sister, Sansa. Jeyne was Sansa’s best friend, a fact that made the girls more apt to giggle than be disgusted.

 

Jeyne was sweet and soft-spoken. She laughed at Robb’s words, put her pretty hand on Robb’s chest, and asked him all sorts of questions so that they talked long into the night. And drank. They drank all night until Robb’s head felt light and his world was blurred at the edges.

 

Jeyne was so sweet…

 

ØØØ

 

Jon had no interest in any of the birds at the party. They were either Sansa’s mates or university girls who would not look at him when he was out of uniform. Everyone was drunk or on the way there, and no one had anything interesting to say. It was horribly boring.

 

He swallowed the awful punch that had been provided (spiked liberally with cheap vodka) and contemplated getting a beer. Honestly, he just felt so much older than everyone here, like he had grown up faster than them, even if they were the same age as he was. It was a queer feeling.

 

Feeling Theon’s presence, he grimaced.

 

“Oh, ho,” Theon chuckled, his hot, alcohol-heavy breath blowing across Jon’s face. “Don’t tell me Jon fucking Scott is jealous because Robb’s taken our little Jeyne?”

 

“Piss off, Theon,” Jon snapped. Theon grinned, unfazed.

 

“Ye ken, Jeyne’s fit and all that, but you could find yourself another girl. Trina over there’s got Jeyne’s hair. She’d go for you. She never did have much taste. She’s not even that bad.”

 

Jon turned his back on the annoying twat and downed an unhealthy amount of the god-awful punch. Theon, because he was a dick who didn’t know when enough was enough, dragged a stool over and sat down.

 

“Come on, Scott, you’re depressing me. Let’s find you a girl.”

 

Jon tossed back the rest of his drink. He stood up to leave, only to find the back of Theon’s hand on his chest keeping him there. He glared into dark eyes that weren’t the least bit glassy.

 

“What is it you want?” Jon asked bluntly, tired of Theon’s games, tired of Theon’s _face_. They had never been friends. Why was Theon heckling him now?

 

“Like I said, you’re depressin’ me. You’re getting awfully mopey for someone who just saw his brother go off to shag a pretty girl.”

 

“Do you ever think, Grey, about what you’re doing here? You fuck these girls and you never think about what they fe-”

 

“-and that’s got what to do with you and our brother?” Theon’s ever-present, secretive grin was insufferable. Jon wanted to hit him. “Hmm?” Theon looked up at him from crossed arms.

 

“I don’t have to explain shit to you.”

 

“Defensive. Nice approach. Seriously, though, let’s find you a pretty bird.” Theon paused in mock thought. “Or is it a pretty bloke you’d be wanting?”

 

“Piss _off_ , Grey.”

 

“So it _is_ a bloke you want!” Theon crowed.

 

That was _it_. Jon wrenched himself away from Theon and stormed off, determined to continue his sulking elsewhere.

 

He had forgotten that going outside through the only door meant Theon would come out eventually, too.

The prick took a fag break not ten minutes after Jon left, joining him on the balcony. He leaned on the railing, flicking the cigarette’s ash over the edge while it was still red-hot. Jon hoped no one below got hit.

 

“S’not like it’s a secret,” Theon said, picking up where he left off. “Dense as you are, you probably didn’t ken but me an’ Robb, hell, me an’ _everyone_ in there-” he jerked his thumb back towards the apartment, “-kens it. Ye just…” Theon waved dismissively. “…let off this air.”

 

Jon snorted. He looked straight ahead, feeling Theon’s eyes on him. This night couldn’t get any worse, could it? Now he had his prick of a foster brother telling him he was such a poofter nigh on everyone knew it just from being around him. Wonderful. _How’s your evening going, Jon? It’s going great, thanks for asking. Just super._ Everyone could piss off.

 

“Nothing to be ashamed of. M’self, I’m an equal opportunity lover.”

 

“Good for you,” Jon groused, settling further down in his slump on the railing.

 

He jumped, feeling Theon’s breath ghosting on the back of his ear. It was surprisingly sweet.

 

“If it’s a bloke you want…”

 

“I don’t want anyone. Especially not my _brother_.”

 

If Jon had kenned or thought to look, Theon’s grin would have told Jon he understood all too perfectly.


	5. Chapter 5

The Scott children have Westeros. It’s always there, in their imaginings, in their daydreams, in their nightmares. The game has a magnetism to it, a sort of sick darkness that pulls at one to play.

But now people are dying, one after the other, and some of the players are starting to wonder just what, exactly, that magnetism is.

 

Arya hated Joffrey. Hated him, hated him, hated him. She had never forgiven the eldest Lancaster child for killing Sansa’s pet and forcing her own away. They had been playing by the riverside on another trip with Mr Burton. Wherever Mr Burton went, his secretary went, forcing Arya to put up with Joffrey and his equally loathsome siblings.

 

They were playing at swordsmen, she and Gendry, Mr Burton’s son, when Joffrey walked by. Sansa was sitting on a blanket, combing Lady’s long fur. Joffrey laughed at them, asking how a little girl would want to be a knight. Arya bristled.

 

“I could beat you any day,” she said.

 

“Oh, yeah?” Jeffrey jeered. “I’d like to see you try.”

 

Nymeria had always been protective of her mistress. All the dogs were. When Joffrey hit her in the face, an agreed upon no-hit zone and drew blood, she jumped in.

 

She bit Joffrey’s forearm, growled and tore at it while the boy screamed like the baby he was.

 

“I’ll kill you!” he shrieked. “You and your dog!”

 

Arya hadn’t believed him. She taunted him. What could he do? Run to his mummy?

 

That’s exactly what he did. Joffrey ran to his mother and told her the Scotts’ rabid dog bit him. Mrs Lancaster rushed him to hospital.

 

 

When she returned, she told their Dad she had called Animal Control. The dogs were rabid and had to be put down. Mr Scott could wait for them to come or put the dogs down himself.

 

Arya disappeared when she heard the words ‘Animal Control’.

 

“Come on, Nymeria,” she told her beloved Corgi. Tears were shining in her eyes. “We’re going for a walk.”

 

Walk they did, for hours. Arya took Nymeria as far from the river as possible. She carried Nymeria over high logs, through streams and over fences. Finally, she carried her over a low wall to someone’s property. The dog would not be able to get back on her own.

 

“Go,” she begged Nymeria. “Run. Be free. Just don’t follow me back, girl. Please.”

 

Nymeria cocked her head to the side, looking at her with her liquid black eyes.

 

“Go!” Arya repeated. “You can’t stay with me.”

 

In the end, she threw a rock at Nymeria. The Corgi yelped and ran off. Arya felt betrayed. She trudged back to the campsite, hot tears trickling down her face.

 

Gendry was the one who found her, the one who told her that Lady was gone, that her father had been the one to do it.

 

Sansa and Arya cried together that night.

 

That trip had been two years ago. Here they were on another trip, the adults having forgotten what had happened the last time. Arya never wanted to grow up. Robb and Theon hadn’t come since both were old enough to say ‘no’ and Robb’s hatred of Joffrey rivalled Arya’s own. Jon was at war.

 

Bran, Rickon and Mum were supposed to come but then Bran had his accident. There was nothing they could do for him and Dad had already paid for the trip. He sat Arya and Sansa down and asked them if they still wanted to go. This was the only time they would get to see their friends until next year. Arya could have cared less about the Lancasters but she liked Gendry. He was a beast at sports and perfectly happy to play Arya’s games. Best of all, he didn’t get along with Joffrey, either.

 

Arya and Sansa thought it over carefully. They asked Bran what he thought. He smiled sadly and said they shouldn’t ruin their holiday on his account.

 

Arya should have kenned this was a bad idea.

 

 

“I hate shooting,” Joffrey snarled, digging a stone out of the path with his toe and kicking it at Sansa. A grimace flickered over her face, just the slightest tightening of her lips, but didn’t complain. She never complained about anything except Arya.

 

“I’m certain you will be very good at it, Joff,” she told him politely. “Didn’t you tell me Mr Burton takes you hunting every weekend?”

 

“Well, yes, I did. But we’re not hunting: we’re shooting. It isn’t the same thing at all.”

 

Joffrey was actually fairly good at shooting. Mr Burton was too drunk to pay much attention to the target and Sansa excused herself to sit on the bench, saying the shooting was much too violent for her. Arya thought she just didn’t want to admit she was pants at it. Arya, of course, was excellent, if a bit rusty in her skills. Mr Burton kept trying to show everyone how to shoot. Mrs Lancaster simply sniffed when he tried to get her to join in. Mr Burton decided that meant she didn’t ken how. He proceeded to show her.

 

“Get. Your. Bloody. Hands. Off. Me,” she bit out, adding “sir” in a completely non-deferential tone. He backed away. Mrs Lancaster calmly lifted the rifle to her shoulder, held her breath and shot.

 

It was almost dead centre.

 

They shot most of the afternoon, replacing the tattered targets often. Arya was starting to see Joffrey’s point about shooting being boring when Mr Burton and her dad finally called it a day. They put their rifles down and went to collect their targets. Arya, Joffrey and Sansa weren’t allowed on the range because of the danger. They had to wait for one of the adults to bring their targets back.

 

Dad and Mr Burton were arguing over Mr Burton’s target.

 

“See, Ned? See that? Perfect shots, all of them.”

 

“Robert, you old fool, there are only five entry holes. You’re missing more than a few.”

 

“No, there’s not!” Mr Burton’s voice was very loud. “Count again, Ned! I count all ten!”

 

“You’re drunk.”

 

The rat-a-tat of a machine gun would haunt Arya for the rest of her life. It took only a few seconds before the gun stopped and Sansa’s screaming was the only sound to be heard. Her dad was on the ground. He wasn’t moving. _Her dad was on the ground._

 

Arya leaped over the barrier and onto the range. Mrs Lancaster screamed at her to get back, not to touch them.

 

Arya knelt by the bodies of the two men, their clothing dotted with a spreading, horrible bright red.

 

“Arya, honey, I’m calling for an ambulance.” Mrs Lancaster sounded so calm. Arya jerked her head up, her eyes flashing.

 

“Which gun was it?”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“I said, which gun was it, you bitch?!” Arya screeched. “I want to ken which one of youse killed my father!”

 

“Arya!” Sansa called out, shocked.

 

“Arya, no one killed your father. Sweetheart, get back here. It was an accident.”

 

It turned out to be the gun on the end. Arya knew because she touched every one, to see which one was still hot. All of the rest were cook, except for the one on the end. The one right next to where Joffrey had been standing.

 

ØØØ

 

Sansa couldn’t breathe. The hospital staff had been so lovely to her. Everyone had been so lovely to her when they said her dad might not wake up.

 

Arya was muttering angrily, about how Joff was responsible, about how suspiciously similar Mr and Mrs Lancaster were, about…Westeros? That children’s game? Sansa hadn’t played that game in years. Arya must be in shock.

 

ØØØ

 

Arya ran. She had nothing but her passport and the credit card Mum had given her for emergencies. She had to get away from here.

 

Sansa was already a lost cause. She would say anything Mrs Lancaster told her to say. She wouldn’t tell the truth.

 

Arya had to get back home. Her mum needed to ken what really happened.

 

ØØØ

 

Mrs Lancaster was so nice. She gave her phone to Sansa so she could call home. Sansa thanked her before she dialled.

 

 

Mum wasn’t there so she talked to Robb. She told him that she and Arya were fine; they just needed to stay where they were to talk to the police.

 

“We’re going to stay with Mrs Lancaster until this is all over,” she told her brother. “We’ll come home right after.”

 

ØØØ

 

Robb’s grip was almost enough to break the plastic receiver, Theon observed from his seat by the countertop. He was relaxed with his boots resting on said countertop, cleaning his nails with a toothpick.

 

“The children will stay with me,” Cersei Lancaster was saying, likely ignorant of the fact that she was on speakerphone. “I will call you when the doctors tell us anything more. Goodbye, Robb.” She hung up. Predictably, she didn’t leave them with a number for the hospital. Or a name for the place. Crafty woman.


	6. Chapter 6

Redheads never looked attractive when they had been crying. Robb was no exception.

 

He kept the waterworks down while dealing with Mr Scott’s business issues (which mostly consisted of calling the late landlord’s former tenants and informing them that their contracts had not, in fact, been nullified) and while around anyone outside the family. The other three were in tears more often than not and weren’t exactly looking to him for comfort, so Theon left them alone.

 

None of the Scotts shed a tear in his presence. Cat he had caught a few times hurriedly drying her eyes when he asked her if she needed him to do anything.

 

“How aren’t you crying?” Rickon asked him once, the little boy toddling into the kitchen. He was hungry and his mummy wasn’t there to make something for him to eat. Theon took pity on him and grabbed an apple from the bowl on top of the refrigerator.

 

“How would I cry?”

 

“Because Daddy’s dead.” Daddy. Did that mean Rickon thought Mr Scott was Theon’s father, too? Probably not. He was too young to ken the difference between “my daddy” and “yours”.

 

Theon leant down and handed Rickon the apple. “Men don’t cry,” he told the boy.

 

 

“How can you be so happy?” Robb snapped, his eyes bloodshot and rimmed in red. His nose was a mess. Theon wanted to do indescribable things to him.

 

He tilted his head back to look at Robb upside down.

 

“I’m not happy: I’m watching telly. Sorry, I’m not acting all depressed.”

 

“That’s the problem. What’s wrong with you?”

 

Theon brought his head back to look at the television screen, folding his hands in his lap.

 

“How do you mean, oh, wise one?”

 

“You haven’t cried yet. How no?”

 

 _How no?_ Theon thought. _Because I haven’t cried since I was seven and my real father told me if I cried again he was going to beat my sister. Because when I was twelve, my uncle stopped visiting and no amount of crying made him come back. Oh, and, let’s not forget, when I was seventeen, the age you are now, your own father shook my hand and told me, “Good luck” before tossing me out into the world. Real men don’t cry, Robb, or did you forget that?_

 

What he said was:

 

“I don’t cry.”

 

“Aren’t you sad at all?”

 

“A bit.”

 

Robb’s hands clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.

 

“Cry, man, or can’t you cry at all?”

 

“I can,” Theon conceded. “I choose not to.”

 

“I thought you were my brother. Fuck you, Grey.”

 

“No,” Theon snarled, getting up from the couch and whirling on Robb. “Fuck you. Fuck you for expecting me to be sad about the man you called ‘Dad’. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s what you called him, not me.

 

“I stopped being your brother three years ago when _your_ father didn’t adopt me and I graduated from the system. He chose not to make me part of your family. He abandoned me so don’t expect me to cry because your precious _daddy’s_ dead.”

 

With that, Theon left the room.

 

ØØØ

 

“I’m calling it off,” Robb breathed against Theon’s skin.

 

“Calling what off?”

 

“The engagement.” Robb’s eyes added the word ‘stupid’. “This-” he gestured between them-“isn’t right.”

 

Theon told himself he wasn’t offended.

 

“I can’t be here and have her there, thinking we’re going to end up together. So I’m calling it off.” Robb paused. “I thought you’d be happier.”

 

Instead, Theon’s stomach clenched. He didn’t want to be real. He didn’t want this to be a relationship. They were good the way they were. Robb was going to get married and Theon was going to be a bachelor until late in his life when he finally found some woman to settle down with, not…this.

 

“So what? You break it off and…?”

 

“And…” Robb trailed off, looking at Theon like he expected him to finish the rest, like they were on the same page. “We stay together. I thought that’s what you wanted. If it isn’t,” he shrugged but Theon would have to be stupid to not see the sentiment underneath.

 

Was Robb stupid? He was set to follow in his father’s footsteps. He didn’t need this sort of scandal.

 

“I don’t think you realize what you’re asking.”

 

“I’m asking you to be with me!”

 

“I am with you!”

 

“I meant officially.” Robb’s voice quieted. “I want other people to ken.”

 

“Well, I don’t,” Theon persisted. “Do you want to be branded a poofter?”

 

“Fuck off, Theon.”

 

Robb pushed off his chest, glaring.

 

Theon glanced at his crotch and sighed. Well, he could always beat one off.

 

ØØØ

 

“Your mum’s gone absolute bonkers,” Big Jon said, handing Robb the daily newspaper and pointing at a particular article. They had been doing the rounds, he and Theon, checking up on the apartments. There was a storm coming up and Robb had decided to inform the tenants that he was not, in fact, responsible for a lack of power when the lines were down. Theon was mostly there as back-up in case anyone decided to do something funny.

 

He leaned on Robb’s shoulder to read the article.

 

Late Lord’s Wife Demands Trial for Husband’s Death, Son’s Accident

 

 

Lady Catelyn Scott is demanding Cersei Lancaster be brought to trial for the unfortunate accident that killed Lord Chancellor Robert Burton and Lord Eddard Scott several years ago. Mrs Lancaster was taking holiday with the two at the time, as she does every year. “It was unexpected,” she tells this reporter. “The gun went off so quickly. I hear these things are very sensitive. I wouldn’t know: I don’t use the things myself.”  
  
  
Lady Scott’s youngest daughter, Arya Scott, remains missing. Any information regarding her disappearance…

 

 

Theon raised an eyebrow. Cat had been simmering on the topic for months, ever since the police decided it was an accident. The Lancasters and the Scotts had a long, tumultuous history with little love lost between them. It had always eaten at Mr Scott that Mrs Lancaster was included in their yearly holidays.

 

Big Jon had done a complete one-eighty since Robb had taken over his father’s business. The first time Robb had met with the tenants, he had loudly demanded a drastic rent decrease, no cap on electricity and reupholstering on all the furniture in his home. Robb had told him no, flat out. When Big Jon continued to test him, Robb handed him an eviction notice…and threatened a non-molestation order if he refused to comply.

 

Big Jon was much more cooperative after that. Theon still didn’t want Robb around him without Grey Wind or himself. Mr Scott had been a very lax landlord. These tenants had been too comfortable with the idea that he would never toss them out on their ungrateful arses. Some of them still though they could pressure Robb enough to keep him from doing so.

 

Others, like Big Jon, thought they could talk to Robb however they wanted.


	7. Chapter 7

They had Mrs Lancaster on her knees, her wrists bound with coarse rope behind her back. Cat had tracked her down with her connections and nabbed the woman, fucking nabbed her, off the streets. Or something. Theon hadn’t enough curiosity to ask for the exact details. Cat was not a woman he wanted angry.

 

Theon watched Robb lazily, an arrogant smirk on his lips. Cat was glaring at Mrs Lancaster, a look the woman returned happily.

 

“Do you know what you have done, Lancaster?” Cat asked coolly.

 

“I have done nothing, Scott,” Mrs Lancaster- Cersei, he should say; no point being polite to a prisoner- returned, not bothering to play dumb. The feud between the two women had gone on for years. Cersei knew exactly why she was here. “It was an accident, one my son was unfortunate enough to witness.”

 

“It was murder,” Cat snarled. “You killed my husband in cool blood.”

 

“The courts say otherwise.”

 

“The courts were wrong. I wouldn’t doubt you paid the judge and the barristers to get you off. People may be bought; the truth may not.”

 

Cat looked at Robb expectantly. Robb had his gun pointed at Mrs Lancaster’s head, Grey Wind snarling at his side. The wolfhound’s massive size didn’t seem to bother Mrs Lancaster in the least.

 

“Do it, Robb,” Cat urged. She was always urging him on lately…and Robb was always ignoring her, brushing her off like so much annoyance. He was eighteen and a man. He didn’t need her mothering him.

 

Theon thought his resistance was a good thing.

 

Robb hesitated, the gun jerking in his hand.

 

“She killed your father,” Cat said, “and murdered his best friend. She did this because she wanted to.”

 

Robb dropped his arm, the gun resting at his side.

 

“No.” He didn’t look at Cat. “We have no proof she did it. I won’t kill her now. Leave,” he said, ordering his own mother. “I want to talk with her alone.”

 

Cat’s lips turned down, but she didn’t disagree. “Come, Theon,” she said, reaching her delicate hand out to him. “Let’s go.”

 

“No,” Robb said, his eyes focused on Mrs Lancaster still. “Theon stays.”

 

ØØØ

 

“You killed my father,” Robb said. Theon was proud of him: his voice barely shook.

 

“Of course, I killed him,” Cersei scoffed. “He deserved it.”

 

“And did my father deserve it?” Robb asked, gun pointed at Cersei’s head. Grey Wind growled.

 

“Yes,” she answered simply, her eyes clear and dry. “He supported my employer and for that he had to die.”

 

“Why?” Robb demanded angrily. “Why did you kill my father, Lancaster?!”

 

Cersei laughed. She tossed her head, her blonde hair falling in long waves over her shoulders. She was the most beautiful woman Theon had ever seen. “You think this is about our families? You Scotts never forget the past, do you?”

 

“Those who don’t remember the past are bound to repeat it.”

 

“You are still a foolish boy, Robb Scott. This has nothing to do with the past. If you knew what _Lord_ -” his name was a curse on her tongue, “-Burton did to me, you would not be so quick to judge me. That man was a menace. His death is a blessing on all who knew him.”

 

“Lord Burton was a good man.”

 

“To his whores, perhaps, but to anyone else? You are severely mistaken.”

 

Theon could not keep quiet any longer. “What exactly are we supposed to believe Lord Burton did to you?”

 

Cersei jerked her head towards him. Her eyes were as cold as glaciers.

 

“He molested me, Mr Grey. I was so happy to be given such a good position, working for the Lord Chancellor. I thought it was my chance to learn the inner workings of Parliament, to study our greatest institution of government from the inside. Instead, I was subjected to an onslaught of innuendo, inappropriate touching and…forceful methods. He was not a persuasive man; rather, he took what he wanted.

 

“He took me after the birth of my first child. I am sure you know Joffrey, Scott: your sister is quite enamoured of him. I was married for less than a year. I had resisted Lord Burton for five. He threatened to give me my leave if I did not return to work within a month. I was tired and ill, but I returned for the sake of my career.

 

“That very day, Lord Burton had his way with me. I was helpless. If I refused, I would be abandoning my career. No one was ready to believe that I had ‘entertained’ the Lord Chancellor unwillingly. I could tell anyone, he said, and none would believe me.

 

“This I suffered for several years. Lord Burton was careful. No one suspected I was less than pleased with our ‘relationship’. Until, one day, I met Lord Eddard Scott. He was Lord Burton’s closest friend, one he saw infrequently. My family has never had a good relationship with the Scotts; yet, this man was different. He was honest in a world full of dishonest men. I knew then that this man would believe me.

 

“But the only times I could get close to Ned Scott were the awful holidays the Lord Chancellor forced me to attend. I went, hoping each time to have a single moment with the man. I knew he would look past Robert’s chancellorship to the horrible man beneath. I could see it when he looked at his friend. Lord Burton had gone corrupt. He was not the man Ned remembered from childhood.

 

“Instead of me going to him, he came to me. Ned Scott came to me and told me that he knew my youngest child to be Robert Burton’s. He suspected the others might be as well. He _accused me_ of adultery. He said that if I was trying to wrangle money from the Burtons, I was sorely mistaken.

 

“I am a Lancaster!” Cersei snarled. “My family is among the richest in the country! We do not resort to base trickery and extortion to accomplish that.

 

“When your father told me that, I knew he had to die. If I could not trust in the honour of the most honourable man in Britain, I could not trust in anyone’s.”

 

ØØØ

 

Robb had always been too kind. With his bleeding heart, he let Cersei go. He just let her walk out of the room and go home, trusting that she would keep her word and not hold her imprisonment and interrogation against them.

 

Cat could not believe it. She raged at Robb, calling him a fool, saying his father would have done differently. That was not true. Ned would have done the same.

 

Cersei did not keep her word.


	8. Chapter 8

Eliška’s nails lashed out, clawing at Robb’s face as she screeched in a language Theon had never mastered. Robb understood it, if standing there and looking repentant, and trying to calm her down could be construed as understanding. Her voice was high, her anger vivid. Robb just stood there.

 

He didn’t look at Theon, didn’t let the blame be placed on him as the woman screamed. Two years was a long time to be engaged. Eliška shouldn’t have been so surprised when Robb called it off.

 

Robb had thought it would go quietly, that Eliška would just let him part his ways. He always thought people would do the honourable thing. He was always so surprised when no one did.

 

Robb had only agreed to the engagement because of Cat. Some stupid mess that involved Eliška’s family, Cat, and outdated marriage practices. And Robb was going to go along with it. Theon had told him to just marry Eliška and have a kid on her. He and Robb could see each other in the summer or go on trips together. Robb could have it both ways.

 

But that wasn’t honourable, and Robb did not do the dishonourable thing. He broke the engagement in person with her parents and Cat there. Eliška attacked him, screaming obscenities in Slovak.

 

He should have moved faster when her father slipped a knife between Robb’s ribs. But he was. He rushed to Robb’s side as his mother did the same. They were too late. There was nothing to do.

 

The next time Theon saw Robb, he was a corpse. A cold, lifeless corpse lying in a morgue without a single stitch of clothing and the blood wiped from his face but not his chest.

 

They wouldn’t let Theon touch him, bury him until the police had a chance to see the body. Cat was in no state to do anything. Theon called the funeral home, had them arrange to pick the body up.

 

In the days following, Theon had to wonder whether Cat would have been better off dying that day. She was like a zombie, unresponsive and dull-eyed. Bran and Rickon were surviving almost entirely off Nan the nursemaid, her grandson and his girlfriend, Osha, the woman who had once played a cruel trick on Bran. She had repented for her actions (her friends had ended up with considerable bouts of compulsory unpaid work) and agreed to work for the Scott household in exchange for not being handed over to the coppers.

 

Really, Theon had taken a fancy to her and dealt out his form of “mercy”. Robb had frustrated him (Theon _had_ been responsible for Bran not being badly hurt, which no one had ever thanked him for) so Theon had set his sights elsewhere.

 

That was how it was, how it had always been: Robb pushed Theon away, Theon found someone else. He never left himself enough time for pity. He would never show his vulnerability.

 

He cried after the funeral, when he left Cat at the grave. Bran and Rickon were in his car, all dressed up in suits and everything. It was hot out, sunny and muggy. Theon touched the tops of the tombstones as he passed them by, his skin dragging across the cement.

 

He would have to call Sansa and let her ken. Cat was in no shape to do so. Everyone else could read it in the obituaries, if they hadn’t already. Theon had written the obituary when Cat’s hand stuttered, paid the fee when she couldn’t sign her name properly on the cheque. He made sure she ate and slept, told her to go to bed and turned the lights off after her. He did the things Robb had been doing for years, ever since Mr Scott died and Arya disappeared.

 

ØØØ

 

“Oi, Scott!”

 

Jon stopped his press-ups, glancing at the private who hurried into his tent. Pyp was a short man, only two years older than Jon, thin and with unattractively large ears. He was one of Jon’s few friends at the post.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Captain wants to see you.” Jon’s heart sank. There were only a few reasons Mormont would want to see him in the middle of the day on a Tuesday. He raised himself to his knees and stood up.

 

“You reckon his family’s cursed?” Grenn asked. He and Pyp were never far off.

 

“Shut up, ya oaf.” Pyp elbowed him in the side.

 

Jon trudged towards Mormont’s tent. He was either being reassigned…or there was news from home. It wouldn’t be good news. They got to see their letters regularly without having to go through the higher ups.

 

This was bad, very, very bad.

 

“Scott,” Captain Mormont acknowledged Jon as the soldier stepped inside.

 

“Captain.”

 

“There’s been news from home.” Mormont dropped a slip of paper on the other side of his desk. Jon looked at it but didn’t pick it up. Mormont sighed. “Go on.”

 

“Sir, I’d rather not.”

 

Mormont nodded.

 

“Your brother has passed away.” Jon had several brothers. “His fiancé…” Mormont gestured helplessly.

 

Jon snatched the paper up, glancing at Mormont in apology. He read quickly, though there was scarce little to be read. Robb. Robb was dead.

 

“I am giving you the rest of the day,” Mormont said in an undertone. “Use it wisely.”

 

Jon walked back out numbly, shoving the paper into his breast pocket.

 

“Jon.” Jon looked up. Sam, his friend and the resident translator, stood there, wringing his hands. He didn’t belong on the war front. He should have stayed a scholar, become a doctor or something equally ambitious. Instead, Sam had enlisted and aced the crash courses in Arabic and Pashto. He could talk to the locals as well as he talked to anyone else.

 

“Sam.” Jon unfastened his pocket and handed Sam the paper.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Jon nodded.

 

“I need to lie down,” he said, taking the paper back. He folded it and placed it in the same breast pocket. Sam wouldn’t tell anyone until after Jon had but leaving the paper lying around was a bad idea.

 

His cot was hard, the mattress thin and sour-smelling. He lay down, feeling nothing, folding his arms over his chest and staring upwards.

 

He knew more people who had died at home than in Afghanistan. This was wasn’t brutal; it was long, boring and hot. Jon had thought he was going to be doing great things and here he was, doing nothing, learning nothing, helping no one.

 

He should have gone home. He should have helped Robb when their father died. He shouldn’t have stayed here and done nothing.

 

ØØØ

 

Jon never came back. Theon kept expecting him to show up after Robb died. He didn’t think Jon would come back to see Cat’s grave but you never knew. Robb’s mother had died in a fit of grief, wasting away on her bed. She had forgotten her other children. Theon tried not to be bitter.

 

Uncle Ben’s wife, the woman he almost never saw, took Bran and Rickon in. The law wasn’t much of a one for caring about familiarity when it came to family.

 

Theon was left to pack up the rest of the things in the home. It had a mortgage, after all, one he couldn’t very well pay- and one he had no connection to, anyhow. The bank collectors would come around sometime. They could settle it then.

 

He did what he could in Cat’s memory. Mostly, he took things to a storage centre and paid for the year’s lot, leaving the numbers for Uncle Ben. He had no right to pick and choose among the furniture and the heirlooms. Finally, he sat on the steps in the empty house, looking around and thinking. Theon sat there for hours, until the carpeting dug into his arse and there was nothing left to think about.

 

Then he took what he could carry and headed home.

 

ØØØ

 

Arya didn’t find out until months after it happened. There was just a little section of the English-language newspaper, an article about the deaths of two British citizens in Slovakia. Gendry had seen it and bought her a copy.

 

She felt numb, huddled against Gendry’s chest as he dozed. They were in Turkey then, doing whatever they could to stay alive, still using the credit cards when they needed to, the cards her mother had never cancelled for some reason. What would happen to Bran and Rickon? Sansa? Was someone targeting them?

 

Arya had never gone back. She knew if she did, she might be wanted for murder. She had seen Mr Burton and her father die, she’d been right there when it happened. There was no way they wouldn’t want her for questioning, and if they did- she had fled Britain. No one was going to believe her after that.

 

Later, she wondered if she could ever go home again.

 

That night, she dreamed of Westeros, horrible, terrifying dreams of bloody feasts and wolf heads sewn onto human bodies.

 

ØØØ

 

Jon didn’t come to the funeral. He sent a note saying he hadn’t been allowed leave but he was very sorry to hear what happened.

 

That left only three family members at the funeral. Theon didn’t count himself as he stood listening to the priest. Cat had wanted a proper Catholic burial. The day was cold and sunny. Robb would have liked it.

 

In that moment, looking at Cat, her crippled son and her other, half-wild child, Theon lost his faith in God. Some would also say he lost his mind.

 

Mr Scott was dead, Robb was dead, Sansa was all but chained to an abusive fiancé and Arya was missing. Jon just hadn’t shown up. All the key players were missing.

 

ØØØ

 

In Westeros, Robb Scott’s murder was called the Red Wedding. Robb, ever gracious and kind, apologized for his infidelity…and was killed for it.

 

Theon blamed it on whatsername, that girl who used to play with them, Jeyne. In Westeros, it wasn’t Theon’s fault. Nothing was ever his fault in Westeros.

 

Jon wanted to come to the funeral. His superiors would not allow it, just like he’d said. Only in Westeros, that was the truth. If there was one person Theon had ever cared about, it was Robb. He couldn’t cope with the thought that Robb had been abandoned like that by his own brother, like Theon’s family had abandoned him. The Night’s Watch had an oath, what was it? No wife, no child? Something like that. In Theon’s mind, that extended to all family.

 

Jon was not ever coming back. Robb’s death wasn’t Theon’s fault. These were the truths to which he held.

 

ØØØ

 

The last time Jon had come home, Theon had sneered at him when he suggested they play the game. He was too old for games when he could go out drinking instead. Robb had punched him in the arm, told him to suck it, Jon was on leave, and share his weed.

 

Well, if Robb was playing…

 

Robb was very affectionate when he was high. He liked to crawl up next to Theon and put his head on Theon’s shoulder, mumbling barely coherent things like how comfy Theon was and could they sxhgit later? It made Jon laugh or maybe that was the marijuana. Jon was a dick sometimes.

 

Jon announced he was tired. Robb had nodded off long ago. Theon left Jon to take care of his brother since he was horny and his curfew wasn’t one like the babies. Rosie would be sure to welcome him on short notice.

 

All Theon ever had to do was tell a girl his sob story of a life and he had an instant feel. Some of them tried to back out after that but it wasn’t that easy to do with a hand down one’s shirt and a tongue in one’s mouth. Theon didn’t have to work very hard to get what he wanted.

 

It made Robb all the more frustrating. Robb wouldn’t take any of his bullshit. He’d push Theon away, tell him to shut up and stop being such an arse, then go right back to laughing with him. It was confusing…and it was tantalizing. Feisty, Theon liked to call him. Dick, Robb liked to call him.

 

Still, it was Theon he clung to when he was high, Theon he felt up, Theon whose shoulder he laid his head on. Whatever he really thought, Robb let Theon smooth his auburn hair down when it got too far up Theon’s nose without a word of protest.

 

ØØØ

 

He couldn’t let Cat ken the truth, couldn’t let her be disappointed in one more son, however tentative a title that was. Cat was old-fashioned and deeply religious; she would be better off hating the Freys and having them leave her father’s company than hating her own son.

 

Theon was in so much pain. He didn’t want one more person to alienate him. He was an adult now and he was as lost as a child.

 

So he went to the only home he still had.

 

The Iron Islands were a cold, desolate place. Northern Ireland wasn’t much better.

 

At first, Theon barely understood a word anyone was saying. Everyone was laughing at him, everyone. Even his uncle, who told him he could stay with him, looked at him with open disdain. It stung.

 

He had no friends in Northern Ireland. Turned out his father was barely tolerated now he’d gone religious. They didn’t look too fondly on Muslims there.

 

There was also that awful, humiliating first meeting with his sister. There Theon was, trying to show off for these Irish girls and one of them turned out to be his sister. He was, apparently, the only one who didn’t find the whole thing funny.

 

They mocked him at every turn. Theon had never realized how good of an education Mr Scott had given him. These people heard three words and called him a spoiled pansy. He threw out his clothes and got new ones. They laughed. He tried his hand at ploughing. They snickered when his palms blistered. The only thing he could do was outshoot them. He’d always been excellent with a pistol.

 

Theon spent six months in Northern Ireland before he gave up. He found work in Suffolk, where people could speak like human beings and writing was considered important.

 

Eventually, though, he longed for Northern Ireland.

 

So he went back and was laughed at again.

 

A year later, he ran into Ramsay Bolton.


	9. Chapter 9

No one touched the actual board for years. But they still played, in their imaginings, in their daydreams, in their nightmares. The game had a magic to it, a sort of sick darkness brought on by the demise of its first mistress.

 

In Afghanistan, Jon played. He was going nowhere fast, with no hope of advancement for years in the rigid ranks of the army.

 

So he dreamed. He pretended. In his dreams, Westeros did his bidding. The sand became snow and the dogs wandering about the dirt and broken buildings became deer picking their way through snowdrifts and forest. The terrified citizens who threw rocks at him and screamed in Dari and Pashto became wildlings with spears and rusted swords.

 

The heat pressed in on him. The hundred-feet-tall sandstorms threatened to destroy him. Sand filtered into everything he wore, threaded through the air and choked him. It was so hot. Jon longed for snow, for woods and forests instead of burnt fields of poppy and the ever-present sand. Jon had heard there were snow-capped mountains in the northeast but he never saw any of them.

 

He didn’t see much of anything, the dust-coloured buildings and the people with their equally dust-coloured clothes blurring into one big smear of colour. The friends he had made were no longer with him, off on their own missions while he was stuck with the most boring and menial jobs. It wasn’t fair. None of these men were soldier material. They should never have come here.

 

They fared little better in Westeros but there Jon could call them names and have their missions end in disaster. In Westeros, he was the day’s saviour and the best soldier to be found.

 

In Suffolk, Theon suffered. Guilt had taken him over, turning him into a man of base emotions and memories.

 

He focused on the other parts of Westeros, ignoring Winterfell, ignoring what had belonged to Robb. He visited the family home and saw nothing changed. Bran was still in a wheelchair. Rickon still growled at anyone who tried to make him do something he didn’t want to do.

 

ØØØ

 

“It’s the game,” Theon said calmly. For the first time, he was calm. He knew what had happened; he knew how to solve this. “The game’s doing all this. We have to get rid of it, Jeyne.”

 

“My name’s Arya,” Jeyne said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Theon, I’m Arya, remember? We grew up together.”

 

Theon shook his head. “No, no, you’re Jeyne. Arya’s gone. She ran away.”

 

“I came back, Theon,” Jeyne said. “I was gone for a while but I’m back now.”

 

“The game’s going to kill you,” Theon told her, his eyes clear and focused. He wasn’t mental. What he knew was the truth. She was Jeyne and the game was a murderer. None of them had realized when they played it but it was. Jon’s death had cemented that knowledge in Theon’s mind. The game was toying with them, killing them haphazardly and not in the order they played with it. Mr Scott had been first, then Robb. Now Jon. Only three people were left who had ever played it. Theon wasn’t even sure Arya was still alive. No one had heard from her for years. She had vanished. But why were Theon and Jeyne the last ones left? Shouldn’t he have been killed before? Shouldn’t Jon? What if he was wrong? No, he couldn’t be wrong. “We need to destroy it.”

 

“What game?” Jeyne asked. She looked so old. She still looked better than he did.

 

“Westeros,” Theon repeated, wiping the dust off the box. “It was a game the kids and I used to play. You played it with us a time or two.”

 

Jeyne worried her lip. “It’s just a game.”

 

“No. It’s more than that. We have to get rid of it. It killed Mr Scott. It killed Robb, Bran and Rickon. Don’t you get it? It’s doing all this.”

 

Theon’s hands shook as he grabbed the box. He could feel the dark power coming from it.

 

“If it’s that big of a deal, we can just throw it out,” the Arya-who-wasn’t-really-Arya said.

 

“No!” Theon’s grip tightened. “That won’t destroy it. What if someone finds it and brings it back? We have to toss it in the ocean.”

 

“Theon…”

 

In the end, she drove him to the seashore and watched him throw it into the surf. She wouldn’t go near the ocean, just sat on the grass with her knees up to her chest. She said she couldn’t swim. Theon knew then, with all certainty, that she wasn’t Arya. Arya had loved to swim.

 

It wasn’t his fault. Nothing in Westeros was ever his fault. He told her this.

 

“Westeros isn’t real,” Jeyne told him. “You ken that.”

 

Theon folded his arms over his chest and hunched in on himself.

 

“You’re not Arya,” he said.

 

ØØØ

 

Theon had always had a steady hand and a keen eye. He was a natural artist. He refused to draw because Jon drew but he would carve anything, turn clay into anything. He didn’t make a habit of showing the skill off for fear of being called a pansy but his closet housed boxes of etchings and whittlings. Rickon even had a little fox sculpture he called Shaggydog. Robb, when he found out, tried unsuccessfully to explain to the boy that it was very confusing to have a pet and a toy with the same name.

 

“Don’ care!” Rickon, who possessed just as much stubbornness as Robb, said, going back to his playing.

 

“That was a nice thing you did,” Robb later told Theon.

 

“I ken,” Theon said.

 

For Cat and Sansa’s birthdays, he carved pretty jewellery boxes out of cherry tree wood, adding a drop of lavender oil to the insides. They were always shocked by the quality of the work, assuming he had spent money he didn’t have on them, thinking they were expensive and priceless. Theon never bothered to explain where he “found” the boxes.

 

Arya received horses and ponies, which she hated. Theon wasn’t sure what the child liked. They never did get on.


	10. Chapter 10

The news came in the evening.

 

Jon should have learned by then that his mail was never good. It was either an accident or a death, or a marriage turning sour. But he hadn’t learned. He had been hopeful every time that someone would tell him the last message had been a mistake or an outright lie, that Arya had turned up or Robb hadn’t died after all.

 

That never happened. Still, Jon hoped.

 

Mormont let Jon have the day to himself, saying just to take it easy and stay close to the camp. When Jon’s back was turned, he told Sam to keep an eye on him.

 

“Told you that family was cursed,” Grenn muttered. Pyp elbowed him in the ribs, which were about as high as the shorter man could reach. Jon ignored them.

 

He walked for a while, before the sight of other people made his stomach hurt. He headed to his bunk.

 

It was empty. Good. Jon lay down on his cot and stared at the tent ceiling.

 

Then he turned over, pressed his face into the thin pillow and wept.

 

He wept for all the family he had lost, for his father, for Robb, for Bran and for Rickon. He wept for Arya, who was missing, and for the servants who had been killed in the fire to the estate. He even wept for Cat, Cat, who had never been kind to him, not even when he was a small child and she was the only mother he knew.

 

He wept to know he was his father’s last heir. He wept for so many things, wept and wept, and wept, until he felt hollow and his throat was raw.

 

It didn’t bring them back.


	11. Chapter 11

Theon had stopped having true dreams long ago. He had no imagination left, no happiness he could achieve in his sleep. Instead, his dreams were all the bad things that had happened. Robb’s death, the fire, Cat’s death, his time in Northern Ireland. They all played on repeat, a different one every night, just over and over again, the edges blurring but the rest stayed the same.

 

It started in Arya’s old bedroom. Someone had lit a candle and forgotten to watch it, Theon guessed. All he knew was the upper floor had burnt first.

 

And then the first storey collapsed.

 

No one had kenned about the termites or the extensive damage they had caused. There was no reason to think that the floor would just fall out and crush everyone below, burning, smoking carpeting spilling down and lighting everything below on fire.

 

The servants were the first ones out. It wasn’t their home. They had little of value in the mansion. Theon was slower, grabbing everything he thought was valuable- his wallet, a few photos, his iPod and a few things he would never admit to owning.

 

He just expected someone else to call the fire department. He just expected someone else to get the kids out of the house. He just expected someone to gather the important papers from the master bedroom. A lot of things he just expected.

 

Everyone else just expected that, too.

 

When someone finally remembered to tell the fire-fighters about Bran and Rickon, Bran had already been buried in the fallen floor. He hadn’t been able to manoeuvre his wheelchair out of the mansion in time; everyone else had been out of the building by then. Bran had died of smoke inhalation. Rickon was nowhere to be found. The dog that followed him everywhere was missing, too.

 

It started in Arya’s old bedroom. Someone had lit a candle and forgotten to watch it…

 

 

Theon felt sick, so very sick. His head pounded and one eye felt swollen, and how did his throat itch? The taste in his mouth was as though he had not brushed his teeth in days. He ran his tongue over his teeth. They were filthy.

 

He should be wanting to die.

 

Instead, he felt relieved, for a reason he could not name. Something had settled, something he couldn’t quite grasp…

 

He could hear voices. They must have been talking for a while, because he wasn’t at all surprised to hear them. Theon sniffed, the snot running down his throat from the force of the sniff. Shite, his head hurt.

 

He must have been awake at sometime, because he remembered someone asking him questions, stupid, mad questions that were not important at all.

 

Shite, his head hurt.

 

ØØØ

 

Wishaw General’s receptionist recognized Arya from sight by now. She had come in so many times before to pick up Theon. He got loose, got into accidents, tried to kill himself…the list was incredibly long. He was a very sick man and all the nurses and doctors knew it.

 

They knew his whole family had died except for his former foster sisters, one of whom lived in India or Japan now, some far off place. Theon did not have contact with her. Arya was the one who took care of him, though he was still clever enough to escape and go wandering. She tried, though, so the nurses called her when Theon was admitted.

 

Today he had come in with scratches on his chest and throat, and a gash from a kitchen knife. He had broken another tooth on who-only-knew-what. It might be easier at this point for a dentist to pull what was left and fit him with dentures.

 

“He appears to be suffering from some fairly severe delusions brought on by the abuse,” the doctor was telling her now. “His boyfriend-”

 

“Boyfriend?” Arya asked, surprised. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked at the doctor with a pained expression.

 

“Yes, ma’am. From what your brother has said, he was in an abusive relationship. Am I right to assume you knew nothing of this?” Arya shook her head. “That isn’t uncommon with these types of delusions. We believe Theon imagined this man and has been inflicting injuries on himself. Theon believes he was responsible for your brothers’ deaths and a fire at your home. He might have created this ‘boyfriend’ to punish himself. We had a psychologist visit him but whether that helped or not is for your brother to say. I hope you will be able to set him straight, Ms Scott. You’re a good woman for helping your brother in his state.”

 

He smiled and left her, and she was Jeyne Poole again.

 

ØØØ

 

Ramsey had told her to bring Theon back. His toy wasn’t to be let free so easily. The…delicacy of the matter had kept the doctors from calling the police. They thought Theon was a very sad case and Arya was a darling for caring for him when she could, taking him back to the house he had grown up in, where she now lived with her husband, Ramsey Bolton. Theon wasn’t the registered owner of the house or Arya’s dependant, or anything. There was no proof he lived there. The servants were told to ignore him. No one who knew him by name.

 

No one except Jeyne.

 

Tears welled up in Jeyne’s eyes. Oh, God, where was Sansa? Where were poor Rickon and Bran? Were any of them even alive? Jeyne didn’t ken where the truth ended and Ramsey’s lies began. Was Theon even sane anymore?

 

It had been a cruel joke of Ramsey’s. He wanted to break Theon slowly, by driving him to madness, so he commanded his servants and his “friends”- as if anyone could be friends with that man- to call Jeyne Arya. Theon had denied it then and denied it still, no matter how many times everyone told him he was wrong. Jeyne had though him so strong then. Now? Now he was just falling apart.

 

He looked old, so terribly old. His hair had turned brittle from malnourishment, his skin was loose and grey and his limbs were stiff so that he hobbled all the time. Sometimes he fell down for no reason, just a lack of energy and sleep. Ramsay wouldn’t give him access to a bath or shower so he stank more often than not. Jeyne didn’t ken how much of it was Ramsay and how much of it was Theon just not caring.

 

The police hadn’t been able to confirm Theon’s story the few times he had escaped and tried to talk to them.

 

Of course, there was no one named Ramsey Bolton. There was no birth record, no driver’s licence, nothing. He had told her that, told her if she tried to run like Theon, no one would ever believe her. Ramsey Bolton was just the name he had Jeyne and his other victims call him. Theon was the only one who had to call him Master.

 

The memory of that night on the beach terrified her.

 

Ramsey had said Theon was becoming too depressed, ‘docile’. He was no fun if he didn’t have the energy to beg.

 

“Take him to see a film. Take him to the beach, hell if I care. Cheer him up. I want him to break harder than he ever has before.”

 

She took Theon to the coast.

 

“Do you think it’s wrong to kill yourself?” Theon asked, staring out at the surf. Jeyne hated the beach. Her mother had drowned in a river when the current swept her away. Ever since, large bodies of water frightened her. They had the opposite effect on Theon, calming him, making him more docile, just like Ramsey wanted.

 

“You can’t go to heaven if you kill yourself, Theon.”

 

His laughter was as bitter as tonic water.

 

“Do you really think I’m going to heaven, _Jeyne_?” He mocked her with that name. She was no longer Jeyne. She was Arya. Ramsey had said so. How didn’t Theon get it? “How kind of you.”

 

She liked being Arya. Arya wasn’t expected to be pretty or brave. Ramsey had never met Arya. Jeyne could be whoever she wanted to be.

 

Arya was the only thing keeping her sane when Ramsay played his games with her. She fell behind Arya’s façade when he tried to drag her down. When he tortured her using Arya’s name, she reminded herself she was Jeyne. She switched in between the two, one day Arya, one day Jeyne. She was whichever one she wanted to be, whenever she wanted to be.

 

In the real world, Theon was the only one who held her to one identity.

 

In Westeros, she could be Jeyne Poole, Sansa’s best friend and lady-in-waiting, or she could be Jeyne Westerling, nobility in her own right. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t gorgeous anymore. It didn’t matter that she’d gotten a funny looking nose or that her lips had turned out too thin. She was _nobility_. She was above the horror her life had become when she was in Westeros.


	12. Chapter 12

Months later, Jon knocked on the door to his former home. He had wanted to see it one more time, thinking that wandering about the grounds would be enough. It hadn’t been. Maybe Uncle Benjen was keeping the estate up. The place was mostly deserted, but Jon could see lights on in the mansion.

 

So long he had imagined coming back. He would see Robb again, Arya again, Bran and their father. He would play with Arya and watch Bran scale the walls like the kid he was. He would walk with Robb and their father about the estate, to the grove that had been in the family for almost a century, a stand of ancient trees and a lake, nature’s beauty perfected by someone long dead. He would teach Arya how to shoot the rifle he had gifted her with and go riding with Bran. Everything would be as it was before he had to leave his family behind.

 

Every piece of mail he received cut out another dream.

 

Now his whole family was dead or missing, or married. He would never see Robb or Dad, or Bran or Rickon again. He would be lucky to see Arya.

 

A boy answered the door, a shaggy, filthy wolfhound snuffling at his side. He was young to be working. Jon smiled politely, about to ask for the owner of the estate, that being the polite thing to do, when he spotted a familiar face.

 

“Jeyne?!”

 

“Jon!” she said, startled. “Shhh, shhh.” She pulled him to the side, a finger over her mouth in warning. She waved at the boy to go do whatever task he was avoiding. “What are you doing here? Are you here to see Theon?”

 

“What? No!” How would Jon want to see Theon, the quasi-brother he had always hated? They had nothing between them now, whether love or hate. Jon had no interest in what Theon did now. His life was his. Jon was over his childhood squabbles.

 

…and yet, he felt strangely curious. Jon knew he looked good. There would be nothing that would make him happier than seeing Theon had gone to seed.

 

Theon looked terrible but not in the way Jon wanted him to look. He was thin, emaciated, _starved_ , the look of a man who had lost more weight than he was ever meant to lose. His skin- it sagged. Loose, disgusting and grey. His hair was thin, brittle, a sign of malnutrition.

 

This was the twenty-first century. No one starved in Britain. What had happened to Theon?

 

“What happened to you?” Jon blurted out. He was a man of few deep thoughts and he had never needed to dissemble around the Grey heir. Theon deserved all of his disdain.

 

Theon didn’t look like he could take any of it.

 

“How kind of you to notice, Scott,” Theon drawled. His voice was rusty, cracking at the edges. “Don’t like my new look?”

 

“You look like a POW.”

 

“You ever seen a POW?”

 

“No,” Jon admitted. The insurgents weren’t organized enough to take prisoners for long. Sometimes they tried to ambush the camp and steal soldiers away, but they always failed. Always.

 

“Then you don’t ken what you’re talking about.” Theon pressed a key into Jon’s palm, his hand deathly cold. “This is for the storage unit. Everything left’s there. Your uncle took what he wanted, so I don’t ken if there’s anything of value left.”

 

“The estate burned three years ago. Why is everything still in a storage unit?”

 

Theon gave him a funny look.

 

“Have you been paying the mortgage?” he asked. “Because I haven’t. Nothing in this house belongs to me…or to you.”

 

This puzzled Jon. “But…you’re here.”

 

“You are a master of wit, Scott. Yes, I’m here. As a guest.”

 

“If you don’t own the estate, who does?”

 

“I do,” a deeper male voice said from behind Jon. “It’s good to see you again, Mr Scott.”

 

Jon whirled around, only barely keeping from slamming the intruder into the wall. There stood Ramsey Bolton with his fleshy face and lips like two worms pressed together. His hair was tied back, but it had the same greasy, unkempt look as always. A disgusting man.

 

Jon looked at Theon, asking silently if it were true. Grey just blinked at him dully. A sour, rotten flavour filled Jon’s mouth.

 

Ramsey Bolton owned the family estate. Ramsey Bolton, the tenant Bolton, from a family of cruel, depraved Boltons. More than once the Boltons had been brought to court on animal neglect and abuse charges, everything from starving horses to dismembered dog corpses found on their property. The servants used to whisper of the horrors the Boltons incurred on them and, worse, on their own wives. Ramsey Bolton was the son of Roose Bolton and his maid, a young, married woman.

 

“Hallo,” Jon said, swallowing thickly. The taste remained. He should have been more polite, but he wasn’t comfortable enough with the oily man to return the sentiment.

 

“I heard you were in Afghanistan.”

 

“Just returned, sir.”

 

“See you’ve still got that military flair,” Bolton said approvingly. “Good to be out of the sand, isn’t it?”

 

Jon nodded curtly. He looked at Theon, trying to find something to get them both away from Bolton.

 

“Can we go see the storage locker? If they’re still there, there’re some things I’d like to take out.”

 

ØØØ

 

“Where’s the game?” Jon asked Theon. Bolton trailed behind them into the storage locker. He made Jon’s skin crawl every time he ran his hands over Scott property. Jon almost wanted to go behind and shake him down to make sure he didn’t pocket anything.

 

He hadn’t expected Bolton to follow them, but the storage place was far away and Bolton had offered to drive. Jon had little pity for Theon, but he wasn’t going to make the man walk three miles with such an obvious limp. Ewan was going to meet them there later, so Jon would not have to let any more of Bolton’s nastiness infect his things.

 

“Game?” Theon repeated lazily. At least his words sounded almost the same. He walked through the boxes carefully, twisting his feet oddly, like he was stepping over roots. The floor was perfectly level. Strange. So strange.

 

“Westeros. You were always some sort of sailor, a Viking maybe. We used to play it all the time.”

 

“Oh.” Theon shrugged one shoulder dully, making Jon grind his teeth together. Something was deathly wrong with Theon. How many years had Jon known him, ever smiling, ever cruelly amused? Enough to know this was wrong, all wrong. Theon was too thin, too weak, too lifeless. “Dunno. Benjen must have moved everything around.”


	13. Chapter 13

“This, you mean?” Bolton asked, picking up the very box. Theon’s eyes widened for some reason.

 

“Don’t touch that!” Jon snapped. He didn’t like this Bolton bloke at all, and he certainly didn’t want him touching family possessions. The game might have been for Sansa, but it had come to be for all of them.

 

“Sorry,” Bolton said tritely, dropping the box back in place. Jon snatched it up, holding it against his chest childishly. It had been years since he played, but he knew the game thoroughly. Last time he’d played, Robb had been with him. Theon, too, but Theon was alive and Robb was not. He didn’t want anything tarnishing that memory.

 

Theon still looked shocked by something.

 

“What’s so important about this game?” Bolton asked, smiling his smarmy smile.

 

“It’s just a game,” Theon said hurriedly, glancing nervously at Bolton. “It isn’t important.”

 

“We used to play it when we were kids,” Jon answered. Why was Theon acting so weird? “My aunt made it, so s’not like you could find it in any store.”

 

“Did Theon used to play this game?” Bolton pressed, leering at him. Jon really didn’t like this man. He got a horrible feeling about the connection between Bolton and Theon, and he didn’t want to stay around Bolton long enough to find out whether he was right. He didn’t much want to stay around Theon, either, but there were things Jon still wanted to talk about that only Theon could tell him, like where Sansa was now and if Arya’s body had ever been found.

 

“Yes, he did.” Theon shot Jon an irritable look. “It was mostly me, him and Robb, so yeah, he played.”

 

“Interesting.” Bolton’s smile became even slimier. “I don’t suppose we could play a round now? I’m sure Theon would like to, for old time’s sake.”

 

Theon looked like he would like anything but, but Jon never was a fan of Theon’s. They would play a round. Maybe Bolton would even get bored and leave them alone to talk.

 

ØØØ

 

His head still trying to process the fact that it was back, Theon stared at the board clutched against Jon’s chest. He had thrown it into the ocean. Even if Jeyne or someone else had found it, how could she have gotten it back to the storage unit? He was the only one with the key. Master had been holding that key for him, but Theon knew for a fact he had never gone through the storage locker. Theon had never told him where it was. Master hadn’t kenned before fucking Scott showed up and demanded to see it.

 

The last part of Robb and the family he once had, and Master had gotten access to it. He’d touched boxes and clothing, and furniture with his hands Theon had kept him from ever even seeing. All because of Scott.

 

Theon was going to kill Scott. He had to ken Theon didn’t want Master there, didn’t want to do a thing with Master there.

 

Master was acting weird. He was actually using Theon’s name which was both unprecedented and unsettling. Theon doubted it was anything good. Nothing good ever came from Master being nice to him.

 

But the game…maybe it had come back for a reason. Maybe Theon could use its horrible magic to finally rid Winterfell of Master. He didn’t even care about himself anymore, but if Scott was here, maybe he could take back what Master had taken from the Scotts.

 

Robb was gone, but maybe, just maybe, a Scott could take back Winterfell.

 

Theon shook his head, feeling his brain rattle. Not Winterfell. Winterfell was in Westeros. The family home, that was what a Scott should take back.

 

Jon explained the first version of the game to Master tersely, handing him the pieces he needed. He gave Master the green piece and flags, the colour none of them had liked. Rickon always got stuck with those pieces because everyone grabbed what they wanted first.

 

Theon took the grey; Jon the black. The white was Robb’s colour; the red Arya’s. Sansa always had blue; Bran always had red. The purple and the gold stayed in the box.

 

He fingered the squid picture still stuck to the grey piece. It felt damp. He lifted his fingers, finding them smeared slightly with ink.

 

Master went first as the guest. He picked the Riverlands. Family, Duty, Honour was their motto. Theon found it sickly ironic.

 

Master rolled the die and moved three spaces, landing on the Highgarden crest, a golden rose on a green field. Since it had no ruler, Master won the Kingdom. He seemed pleased, putting a flag on it.

 

Jon rolled and landed on Highgarden as well. The game went quickly this way, Master and Theon claiming bits of the Seven Kingdoms, and Jon taking them away. This was how it always went when a new player played, the new person not understanding that Jon, as the Lord Commander, could not be attacked at the Wall. One had to defeat him in the Kingdoms to stop him from taking one’s flags away for the Wall. The easiest way to do this was to strike up an alliance and forge an agreement that Jon would not take flags from one’s territories, which was not an easy thing to do at all.

 

Master kenned none of this, and Theon let him suffer. They circled the board again and again, Master growing more frustrated as he realized that he could not keep a flag on all the other Kingdoms and attack the Iron Islands. Jon kept picking his flags off, so that Master was continuously retaking the same Kingdoms, while Theon sat on Pyke and did nothing, leaving almost all of his flags on the Iron Islands. Three of them were in the North with most of Jon’s flags, a strange sort of solidarity they had not communicated.

 

Theon was actually starting to become amused, an emotion he had not felt since he met Master. The bastard just kept going around and around while Jon defeated him over and over. They could keep at this for hours.

 

Master was not so amused. His movements were becoming jerky, his jaw twitching the way it did when he thought someone was trying to take the piss out of him, which was exactly what Jon was trying to do. He wasn’t paying much attention to where he put his hands or elbows.

 

The loose edge had always been there, ever since the first time they played. Maybe Robb had damaged the board when he first opened it, maybe Aunt Lyanna wasn’t paying enough attention when she made it. In a battle of sharp steel versus soft skin, the steel always won.

 

Theon did not think to warn Master. He had learned to avoid the edge a long time ago.

 

ØØØ

 

Jon did not see the see the cut, only heard the angry snarl as Bolton ran his arm along the edge. He looked up just as Bolton’s arm came up, aimed straight at Theon.

 

He saw Theon flinch, saw Bolton stop himself suddenly when he realized Jon was looking. Jon’s jaw clenched. So that was how it was.

 

“Get me a towel, Theon,” Bolton said, bringing his hand down. 

 

That edge had always been loose, the glue holding the metal border to the cherry wood too weak to keep the corner down. Bran and Arya were always catching themselves on it, leaving little nicks and cuts on their fingers. Robb had once slashed a ten-centimetre long line on his forearm. Jon remembered watching the blood well up, while Robb told him that it wasn’t anything big, Theon actually looking mildly concerned in the background.

 

Theon did not look concerned this time. He looked afraid, hunched down on the box he was sitting on with fearful eyes trained on Bolton. At a sharp glance from the other, he scurried off to find something absorbent among the family things. Jon would rather Bolton bleed out.

 

“I think we’ve played enough,” he said, sweeping the pieces off the board and putting them back in the box.

 

“Yes,” Bolton agreed, surprisingly enough. He stood up, taking the hand towel Theon had found from him. “I’ll leave you two to your childish games. I’m sure you have so many things to catch up on.”

 

Jon watched him saunter out of the storage locker in distaste. Bolton was a greasy, nasty, vicious creature who didn’t deserve the family home.

 

It’d be a fucking miracle if he turned up dead.

 

ØØØ

 

“You could leave,” Jon said, avoiding Theon’s gaze. He didn’t have a good reason for trying to help Theon; they’d never been friends, never so much as shared a kind word in all of Jon’s memory. “Just pick up and go.”

 

Theon shook his head. He had a bruise forming on his too visible collarbone. Jon didn’t think it had come from a lovebite.

 

“Not that easy, Scott.” 

 

Jon’s jaw twitched, but he didn’t press further. Theon was as infuriating as ever, even if he had stopped that stupid smiling of his. He’d smiled once since Jon had been back, showing what looked like two missing teeth on the right side. Jon shuddered to think how he had lost them in less than five years.

 

“What happened to Cat?”

 

Jon couldn’t tell if it was apathy or joy he saw in Theon’s eyes.

 

“After Robb, she gave up, wasted away.” Of course. Jon, for all his own miserable childhood and suffering under Mrs Scott, had known Theon hadn’t stood much higher in Cat’s eyes, certainly not as high as any of her own children. “Sansa got married. I think the last time anyone saw her out of bed was at the wedding.” Theon’s words were dull, no thought to them. He didn’t care.

 

“What happened to you, Grey?” Jon asked too softly. “What made you turn out like this?”

 

Theon’s smile was as bitter as midwinter.

 

“I’d like you to leave now, Scott.”

 

ØØØ

 

Theon stayed in the locker when Jon left with his mate. Master had forgotten him, just left without remembering his favourite toy was three miles from home in a storage unit. Theon did not feel forgotten. All he felt was relief.

 

He had a few minutes alone, a few minutes where he could dream and think, and remember without worrying that Master was nearby, waiting to snatch any happiness from him. Master liked building him up, giving Theon a false sense of security, then tearing him down even harder. It was better not to be happy at all.

 

Sitting on a dusty cardboard box, he leaned back against a bookshelf and closed his eyes.

 

“You are a fool,” Theon had once told him as he cleaned the grit out of Robb’s arm after yet another fight with Joffrey Lancaster. By then, the line between friend and lover had blurred so greatly that every word, every breath was an exercise in just how far Theon could go. “A goddamn fool and lucky it isn’t any worse or I’d have to take you to hospital.”

 

“Mm,” was all Robb said. Theon, unsatisfied with that answer since he _was_ taking the trouble to clean the idiot up so no one else had to ken his idiocy, jabbed the alcohol swab into the deepest part of the cut. Robb hissed and glared at him. Good.

 

“Why don’t you tell Cat? She’d stop all this.” The grit was almost out. If Robb hadn’t decided Joffrey needed a smackdown in the driveway when he dropped Sansa off, Theon would not be doing this.

 

Joffrey had been courting Sansa for years then, taking her out twice a week, bringing her back with bruises she covered up with long jackets and heavy makeup. She never saw her friends anymore, just Joff, who she said she loved. Sansa still thought the fake engagement was real, that Joffrey still planned on marrying her.

 

“Mum can’t stop Sansa, y’ken that.” Robb grimaced. Theon had wrapped the bandage too tight. Theon gave him a look that told him to suck it.

 

“And the coppers?”

 

“The coppers couldn’t get Joffrey’s mother on murder charges. Do you think they’ll get him for this?”

 

Theon just kept rolling the bandages.

 

The scene changed, turning to months later, after Robb’s engagement to a girl he had only met once.

 

Robb’s breath was hot against the side of his neck. Theon closed his eyes, sucking in a breath. Hands touched him, laying on either side of his hips, so desperately close.

 

“Do you want this?” Robb asked, his voice low and not a bit husky.

 

Theon was proud but not too proud for this. There was little possibility if he turned Robb away now that he would get a second chance.

 

“Yes.”

 

Theon grasped at the memory, trying to keep it going, but it unravelled in his mind. Time went further back, to some party somewhere. Theon was nineteen; Robb sixteen. Theon had just hit on Robb, spinning it off as a joke, and everyone, everyone was laughing.

 

Robb gave him the tongs and Theon laughed. Scott wanted him, no doubt about it. He tried to deny it, but it was impossible. Theon was the epitome of manliness and Robb was susceptible to that. As all people should be.

 

The other memories always faded, but that one remained: Robb giving him the two-fingered salute while his lips quirked up at the sides, telling Theon he could never be honestly mad at him, no matter what stupid thing Theon said or did.

 

ØØØ

 

Jon did not take Bolton up on his offer to stay in his “old bedroom”, as though Bolton even knew which room that was.

 

He stayed with a mate from school. Jon had changed a lot. Ewan hadn’t. It was interesting. They went out drinking, got back late and slept until well past noon. Jon woke up on the couch to the smell of beans, toast and eggs. His stomach growled unpleasantly. Maybe no breakfast for him today.

 

“Hey,” Ewan said, tossing the newspaper at Jon as he padded into the kitchen, scrubbing at his face. Jon caught it. Barely. “Didn’t you say you went to see that bloke yesterday?”

 

“Who?” Jon asked, unfolding the paper.

 

Ewan took a gulp of his tea and pointed at the paper.

 

It was a copy of the local paper, the Kirkintilloch Herald. There, on the front page, in the corner was a sliver of an article.

LOCAL MAN DIES IN FREAK LORRY ACCIDENT

Last night, Ramsey Bolton, owner of the late Lord Eddard Scott’s residence, passed away in a car accident. While driving home last night from Evans Easystore, the realtor suffered car trouble and pulled to the side of the road. A lorry driver coming in the opposite direction lost control of the wheel and drove into Mr Bolton, killing him instantly. The lorry driver, Mr John Patterson, was…

Jon whistled. “Fucking hell. Bolton was an arse, but- fucking hell,” he repeated. His mate nodded, though that might have been in time to the Finnish death metal he was listening to.

 

“So, beans on toast?”


	14. Chapter 14

It wasn’t fair, Rickon thought. Ever since Bran’s accident, no one had paid any attention to him. They cared more about that stupid game than him, their son or brother, or master. They spent more time playing with a game than with him. It wasn’t fair.

 

 _I will care about you_ , a voice whispered in his mind.

 

Rickon cocked his head. He had never heard this voice before.

 

“Who are you?”

 

_Come and see._

 

With Shaggydog at his side, Rickon took the steps down to the playroom.

 

ØØØ

 

They hadn’t cared about him. The house had been burning and no one had come to save him, no one but Shaggydog. Bran had gotten what he deserved, like the game had promised.

 

Theon had gotten what he deserved. Suffering unending at the hands of a worm of a man. Ramsey Bolton was a nasty man, slimy like Rickon thought snakes were, but he had rebuilt the mansion and hired new servants, none of whom knew who he was. Rickon was alone, but now he was alone because he wanted to be. It was just him and Shaggydog. They did a few chores, and no one messed with Rickon because no one could get too close to Shaggydog.

 

Shaggydog didn’t like the game. He refused to be around Rickon when he used it, when he clutched the special pieces and thought of the punishment he wanted doled out. Death was the worst thing Rickon could think of. Nothing could be worse than death. Only the people who hurt him the most got death.

 

For years, he had watched Theon with glee, imaging that the same was happening to Sansa somewhere. Theon had never _really_ been bad to him, but he had also never paid any attention to Rickon, just spent all of his time with Robb. Anyways, he wasn’t Rickon’s _real_ brother.

 

Now, Jon was back. Rickon had seen it with his own eyes. Shaggydog had seen Jon, too. He was really there. He hadn’t died in Afghanistan.

 

But Ramsey Bolton had, and the game had done it. Rickon had known it the second he heard the news.

 

The game had called to him when Theon threw it in the sea. It wanted to be brought back. So he went and gathered up the pieces; put them all back in the box and carried it all back to the storage locker. He knew where Theon hid the key. Shaggydog had helped him sneak into Easystore.

 

Everything had been so wet, Rickon had thought the game’s power might be gone. But the game still had some power. It still whispered to him, telling him it had been too long since it had last feasted on blood.

 

It wanted his blood, but one couldn’t play the game alone. There had to be other players.

 

Somehow, Jon got to the game before Rickon could. He learned how to use the game, and now he had killed Bolton. He would find out that Rickon hadn’t died and what Rickon had done.

 

Worst of all, the game would not listen to him anymore. Dad, Mr Burton, Joffrey, Robb, Mum, Bran, all those people it had killed for him, maybe even Arya and Sansa, too. But not Jon. And now it answered to Jon.

 

ØØØ

 

Rickon covered his eyes with one dirty hand, staring up at the stone walls of the mansion. Bran had loved climbing these walls, loved climbing everything really, but especially the stone walls. He would go all the way to the top and run around the roof, up where no one would follow him.

 

He never invited Rickon to climb with him. He always said Rickon would get hurt. But it was Bran who got hurt.

 

Bran was the one who should have played with him. They were the closest in age, both boys. Bran should have been his best friend. Instead, Bran ignored him. When everyone else was gone and Bran was the only one left, Bran still didn’t think to play with Rickon.

 

All Rickon had wanted was to play with him.

 

He had never climbed the walls. Not once.

 

Shaggydog licked his hand, whining softly. Rickon rubbed his head. Shaggydog was half-wild. Rickon almost never fed him, just let the wolfhound hunt rabbits and birds on the hills and anything that lived among the trees. Shaggydog would be okay.

 

Rickon just wanted to climb.

 

So he did.

 

Hand over hand, he went upwards, getting that much closer to the top. He was going to run on the roofs just like Bran used to. He was going to climb until he reached the sky.

 

The stones, slick from moss and the recent rain, made it slow going. Rickon tried to be careful, but he had never done this before. He thought he could do it.

 

Then he slipped, and he was flying.

 

ØØØ

 

Rickon’s twisted body lay on the ground. He had fallen, just like Bran had years ago.

 

The boy smiled, coughing a great, wracking, wet cough full of blood. He did not know it, but two of his ribs had snapped, one of them puncturing a lung. Badly concussed, his skull was filling with blood.

 

Rickon knew none of this. He looked up at the sky, blinking slowly. Was this what Bran had seen? It must have been. The sky was so bright, so beautiful.

 

When he woke up, everyone would pay attention to him. When he woke up, everyone would love him again. When he woke up…


End file.
